Weer'd World

Joan has a post up about the NRA Convention.

I’m totally missing being there, but this post cheers me up a lot. First this:

Whenever a bunch of Americans get together to celebrate a display of deadly weapons, it’s a moment to reflect on what this is really all about. Yes, there are trade shows for other things like cars, boats, etc. People come to see what’s new and to think about what they might want to buy. But we are talking about firearms here. We are talking about the weapons that flow so freely in America and cause so much devastation in our communities. These are not just guns used for hunting and self defense. A good many of them are weapons designed to kill as many people at one time as possible. Yes, the people who attend are ostensibly law abiding gun owners and good Americans. But do they really understand what this is all about? This isn’t just about supporting gun owners, hunting sports and recreational shooting. This is about so much more.

Yep guns are different because they are different! Also cars kill more people per year than guns, but Joan omits auto shows as things to be concerned about…well because she HAS a car and drives to work! Also interesting to note that Joan seems to claim that self defense guns are OK in her book. Of course she doesn’t REALLY believe that, but she understands how out-of-touch she is, so she has to pretend to be more like whatever she pictures “Regular People” to be like.

Still what makes a gun “Designed to kill as many people at one time as possible”? Also what might a gun like this be? Sorry but an AR-15 with a 30 round magazine is just a good idea for self defense. Self-defense is not a one-on-one sport! Bad guys can travel in packs, and shots can miss or fail to stop an attack, that means you need more shots! Mag changes and other re-loads are a bottle-neck in the manual of arms, and the less you need to do this the better. Most self-defense shootings end with far less than 30 rounds being exchanged, but do you want to bet your life on that? Also if you end a violent encounter with ammo in your mag who does that hurt? Tactical reloads are a luxury I would hope to be given in the horrible instance when my life, and the lives of my family are on the line. Better to have ammo to spare when the police arrive to pick up the pieces than to have an empty gun in the middle of a fight.

But that’s reasonable talk, and that has no place at Common Gunsese! Now the knee-slapper!

The star studded event will surely continue the fear and paranoia so endemic at NRA conventions. Media Matters writes about who will be the convention.

…Really? That’s who they’ve got? Sarah Palin is a fading star if she ever was one. What in the world does she have to say about guns and gun violence that is important to anyone but those in the room? (Hint- it starts with the letter “f” and ends with “reedom”) Right. Wayne LaPierre? Sigh. More on him later. Ted Nugent? Seriously? They want to have him rant offensively to get the crowd going? This is who they bring to their convention? Pay attention America. This is not your father’s NRA any more. Ted Nugent is a rude and ludicrous clown who serves on the Board of the NRA. The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence has a truck with some quotes from Nugent on the sides and refers folks to their Meet The NRA website where you can read more about the fine upstanding citizens who serve on the board of one of the nation’s most influential lobby groups.

Funny, Media matters mentions Glenn Beck who’s just massive right now, and Joan doesn’t have a comment about it. Still the others she doesn’t like. Good for her. Who were the big-name celebrities at the Brady Campaign meeting? Oh!

Yeah, NRA is a bunch of has-beens stuffing a massive convention center filled with paying members, and having national celebrities talking…all being openly reported by the press and broadcast on the internet, while the Brady Campaign and the Bloomberg groups have closed-door meetings with nobody of consequence, and no true membership.

Its all sour grapes, and I LOVE it!

So many of you are packing up and heading to Indianapolis for the NRA annual meeting. Part of me is sad I’ll be missing it, especially since there are a bunch of you who will be there who I haven’t seen since last year, Jay will be there, who I haven’t seen since before my daughter was born, and there are a bunch of you who I’ve been wanting to meet face-to-face for years who will be there.

The other part of me is completely exhausted, and will be attempting to sleep in and get chores done this weekend, rather than putting them off for yet another week.

Still we’ll get back to the pro-gun side and what we do when we get together.

Let’s look at the antis. Two recent protests here. the Brady Campaign:

Not sure which group these guys belong to, if any:

First up, almost no people under the age of 50, and 60+ appears to be the average age for both, possibly skewed by low turn-out. Numbers are also small. Still also look at their faces. They’re sour, angry people.

Now back to pro-gun. We’d probably look the same way if our movement was truly similar. If we were the “Defensive Gun Use Lobby”, and all we focused on was shooting and/or killing criminals we’d be a pretty dour bunch as well. You see, all the anti-gun side really talks about is “Gun Death” and “Gun Violence”. Sure they also talk about background checks, and banning certain guns or accessories, but its all framed as “Gun Death” and “Gun Violence”. That’s all they really boil down to.

Meanwhile at the NRA show its a party atmosphere. People are handling cool guns! I get excited about guns I have no interest in ever owning just because they’re COOL! I own guns that I have just because they’re cool and/or fun to shoot. We have hunting, we have target shooting, we have action shooting.

Now the other side may have all the social sides we do. I mean we don’t spend the whole time of the conventions talking about guns and 2nd Amendment rights. There’s generally a lot of talk about food, our families, our other hobbies ect. In the evenings we’ll put up the guns and have some adult beverages. Still I even have my doubts about this, as you never hear about a bunch of anti-gun people gathering in a restaurant just for a meet-and-greet. You don’t have web forums like The High Road, Northeast Shooters, or AR-15.com for social interaction.

Hell Mas Ayoob makes his bread-and-butter from training and teaching people how to deal with using lethal force against other people, and being an expert witness in court for homicide cases, yet he’s also well known as an avid action pistol shooter and hunter. He’s a funny and nice guy, but I doubt he would be quite as funny and nice if ALL he ever did was look at autopsy photos and recount stories of when some guy had to shoot some other guy.

We joke that there is no such thing as an anti-gun show, but really the truth is there is no such thing as having FUN while being an anti-gun activist. There just isn’t room for it. Hell we joke about their “Blood Dancing” and idea that some anti-gun activists get excited and happy when they hear about a shooting like Sandy Hook, and how it was young children killed, and an AR-15 was used. I don’t know if that happens, but even if it does they can’t admit to it because it’s simply ghoulish.

Yet when Remington released the R-51 people got REALLY excited because it was new and neat, and many of us are disappointed that at the time of me typing this, it isn’t really a great gun.

I self-describe myself as a Kahr Fanboy, because I think their guns are REALLY cool. I like looking at and handling their guns, even tho I really don’t see myself buying another gun from them since my PM45 is really all that I need. I get joy from guns because they are FUN! Of course I CARRY guns because they might save my life, or the lives of my family one day. That part isn’t fun, but gun rights are saved by the fact that hitting the range, and taking new shooters for their first shots is FUN!!!

There is no fun in being anti-gun. Further there are LOTS of places that have all the gun control laws in the world, and yet they are still dangerous places, and innocent adults and children are murdered there. In the UK they went from banning guns, to banning knives. So even the idea that they can deal with this ugly topic until its solved is unrealistic. The people in these pictures have devoted themselves to being miserable until the day they die.

Isn’t that horrible?